AMD’s Ryzen confirmed for early March launch

AMD has confirmed that it will be launching its new-generation CPUs, called Ryzen, in early March this year, giving us our first real concrete launch date for the technology. We were previously told to expect the new chips in the first quarter of this year, but now we know for sure it's just a few weeks away.

The AMD Zen architecture is a hotly anticipated hardware launch that many have high-hopes for. Although many remain cautious considering AMD's history of over-hyping launches and under-performing with high-end processors, Ryzen CPUs seem very impressive from pre-release benchmarks and reveals. They have the potential to compete directly with Intel's high-end CPUs, which if true, would be the first time AMD has done as such in more then a decade.

That's why knowing when they are set to launch is so exciting and why AMD CEO Lisa Su's comments have people talking (via SeekingAlpha):

“I think we have Ryzen launching in early March and then we'll have Vega, our enthusiast GPU launching in the second quarter,” she said during an earnings call yesterday, 31st January.

“We should see Ryzen doing very well in the high-end,” Su said, “as well as Vega and by nature, since both of those high-end markets are markets that we don't have significant presence today, there will be an opportunity to both gain share as well as increase attach rates in those markets.”

Ever since the much more competitive days of the AMD 64 and Pentium 4 chips, AMD has struggled to offer significant competition to Intel's top-of-the-line processors. It always offered good value for money, but for gamers and enthusiasts Intel has been the dominant force for a long time. Real competition between the two biggest desktop chip makers has the potential to drive down prices and encourage significant innovation.

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KitGuru Says: Are you guys as cautiously optimistic about Ryzen as we are? If for no other reason, we hope it sparks a new rivalry in the desktop space that sees some significant performance gains. Intel's last few generations have barely raised the bar in comparison to generations past.

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